It’s not looking like a good week for Sir Keir Starmer’s lot and it’s only Monday. This morning, Health Secretary Wes Streeting launched the ‘biggest consultation in NHS history’ in a bid to get public input into how to save the UK’s flailing health service. Posting on Twitter today, the Health Secretary wrote that ‘all patients, staff and partners’ can now ‘share your views and experiences’ to help the Labour government shape its ten year plan. While it all sounds rather optimistic, Mr S has spotted that the answers to the questionnaire are being made public – and they are not quite as, er, positive as Streeting may have been hoping…
From ‘diversity’ spending to concerns about immigration, the responses are rather damning. One participant blasted the health service for spending ‘between £13 and £40 million a year on diversity officers’, fuming that: ‘This waste needs to stop and the money used on patient care or nurses pay.’ Another titled their complaint starkly: ‘NHS not IHS’ – writing that: ‘We seem to be paying for an International Health Service where foreign nationals can fly into the UK to use NHS services free of charge.’
The matter of trans rights was an issue for someone else, who raged:
The NHS needs to return to the sane and fundamental understanding of biological sex. Healthcare for women is not the same as healthcare for men. The NHS must stop promoting idea such as drug-induced breastfeeding for men in order to satisfy male fetish, and focus on biological reality. Women struggle to get proper breastfeeding support so why would the NHS promote experimenting on babies in this way. It’s dangerous and frankly obscene.
Strong stuff…
Another user opted to air their thoughts on the free-at-the-point-of-use service in a rather straightforward manner, writing: ‘Privatise everything. I don’t want queues, no waiting lists, just make it private, allow the price mechanism to work for heaven’s sake thank you.’
And of course the widely-cited issue of exactly how Britain’s health service spends its money cropped up too – with another respondent writing succinctly: ‘Reduce the management, be efficient on clinical aspects and use the money on what the NHS does best: HEALTHCARE!’
If these are the responses logged only three hours after Streeting’s post, Mr S wonders how the feedback will shape up over the course of the day. Steerpike has also had some trouble loading the website’s questionnaire. What with faulty tech and a disgruntled patient population, the Labour lot certainly have their work cut out, eh?
Mr S has selected some further highlights here…
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